I’m really not that much for going all Christ-bashing (heck, there are plenty of things more interesting in life than this particular brand of religion). I usually only do it for fun, or it when it intervenes with any topic of real interest – natural science, history, sociology, psychology or comparative religion. This, though, was just too absurd to leave out.

The topic this time is religion and reproductive health – to be more specific, contraceptives. Far from all Christians have a problem with contraceptives. The infamous views of the Catholic Church are well known, but a few evangelicals and fundies share the notion that contraceptives are sinful as well – not in accordance with the Divine Order of every Christian family having 7 children each (remember the Python skit?.

Anyway. If you’re staunch about such a position, it might lead to some really bizarre situations – and this is where our tragic protagonist enters. 40-year old evangelical male, father of three. Has used contraceptives in the past. Now his wife has come to the conclusion that this is sinful. She is in her forties, has already had three C-sections and is afraid of complications if she were to get pregnant again at her age. Most importantly, she just doesn’t want to have another baby. Thus, she has given him an ultimatum: No sex until he gets a vasectomy.

So far, nothing very strange. Vasectomy is an excellent and pretty much fool-proof birth control method. If anyone for some reason would choose that over other contraceptives, I really don’t give two shakes about it – regardless of how esoteric the reasons may be.

But here, the crucial issue arises. He concludes that his god, pathologically obsessed with wee-wees as he is, considers it sinful to get a vasectomy as well. Thus, he won’t. His wife stands by her word, and this puts them in the following dilemma:

So it has now been 15 months since we have had sex or even done much in the way of snuggling. It’s not that we don’t want sex. She has said several times that she didn’t sign up for a sexless marriage. But even more than she wants sex, she doesn’t want another pregnancy, another delivery, and resetting the clock for being a stay-at-home mom.

The lack of sex has been a wedge between us. The chemical thing that happens to your brain during sex to boost the emotional bond between a couple — that’s supposed to help sustain a couple in through the stresses of living together, but it’s not available to us.

I’d like to reserve the comment box for this entry for those Christians who believe that contraception is a sin, to suggest solutions to my dilemma: How do I protect my wife from a dangerous pregnancy while avoiding the sin of abstinence and the sin of contraception?

Oh. My. Fictional. God.

Guess what? There is no ******* solution. If you put your absurd interpretation of a collection of Bronze Age mythology before the love of your wife, to the point of destroying your marriage, there is really no solution to it. And none – none – of this domestic tension would have taken place at all, if you hadn’t been so goddamn stuck-up about this. Frankly, I do not pity this man at all. I pity his wife, the victim of his obstinate abstractions, and his children, who may soon have to face the divorce of their parents due to the silliest reason in recorded history. But I do not pity him. Anywhere. It’s his bed.